


Nothing Else Was Built the Same

by togina



Series: Nothing You Can Name [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-26 01:51:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1670318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/togina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The 107th is sent over the line, the kind of fatal mission Sgt. Barnes has been trained to expect. The man who saves them, however, isn't what he expected at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Else Was Built the Same

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [Nothing You Can Name](http://archiveofourown.org/works/336575), and will probably make very little sense given the multitude of character cameos unless you've read that.
> 
> This time, the 107th makes it into the Captain America movieverse. And I'm terribly sorry about the canon depressing ending.

One of the nice things about being in the infantry, Parkinson assured them, was that no one wanted their opinion. The Army was interested in their legs, their arms, and their eyesight. Martin added that they certainly weren't interested in their stomachs, or there would have been hamburgers in the K-rats. And maybe an egg cream.

The lieutenant rolled his eyes and turned back to Dawkins, who had mentioned that storming several miles into Axis territory without any back-up to sabotage a factory didn't seem all that smart. He had spoken over Klepper, who still had his hand raised. That made Morita suggest they blow spitballs at the commander, and Ewling was tearing pages out of his field manual to fold into airplanes while Esposito dozed on his knapsack and Jones sat among them and tried to look dignified.

“Yes, Klep'?” Parkinson asked, ignoring Dawkins' continued protests, and sounding almost exactly like an elementary-school teacher. Though Bucky's teacher had generally been holding a ruler and muttering things like “backward” and “incorrigible”.

“Did you tell them we're still short?” All three of Klepper's superiors gave him bemused looks. The private rubbed a hand over his reddening neck, looking around at the pile of rations they were trying to make last, the cigarettes they had started taking where they could find them. At Jones, in a coat that had belonged to an Italian farmer a few towns back, and Martin's colorful bedroll.

“ . . .Of?” prompted Cpl. Martin.

“Yes, I did,” Lt. Parkinson said at the same time, not bothering to ask what Klepper thought they needed.

“Men,” he mumbled, sounding so mortified that Sgt. Barnes almost told him it wouldn't matter. That Parkinson had actually terrified the operator and their captain when he grabbed the radio and refused to use his soldiers as cannon fodder without reinforcements, rations, and a good rationale.

The colonel had offered to court martial Parkinson and promote Barnes, and his gloved and groomed officer had clenched his jaw and stared out over their camp. Bucky had tapped his lieutenant's shoulder and shrugged, making his superior jump before turning to scowl at him. He slipped on Parkinson's dog tags and posed, and the lieutenant's scowl grew deeper.

“I am _not_ reading about this in the goddamn newspaper,” Parkinson had snapped, and that had settled it. Only - “And how did you get my goddamn dog tags, Barnes? I might need those!”

They spent that night looking at maps, waiting until the privates had fallen asleep and Parkinson had returned from meeting with the other lieutenants. Ewling kept whimpering, but that was probably due to Martin's ill-timed reminder that they should all have their serial numbers memorized. Bucky would have stolen the corporal's cigarettes in retaliation, but Martin was systematically smoking them all so that he wouldn't have any left by the time they passed out of no-man's land. Parkinson had pointed out that they were German cigarettes, anyway, and Martin had growled, “Then they can buy 'em with bullets, like I did.”

“What's so all-fired important? They building rockets? They got super-soldiers stashed there?” Their target – Operation Pygmalion, for reasons Bucky couldn't fathom other than that it gave Martin an excuse to call them all swine – was a German munitions factory. At least, that was what the colonel said. Martin had started out hopeful: maybe it was a cigarette factory, or a German whorehouse. The lieutenant had rubbed his forehead and declared that the last thing they needed was _another_ war in a brothel. The last one had been bad enough, and no one ever wanted to see Martin in a silk robe again. By the time the moon had risen and set Martin had decided they were headed for Hitler's top-secret headquarters, guarded by rabid dogs and men with weapons from Mars. Bucky had fallen asleep listening to Martin elaborate on space helmets while Parkinson insisted they weren't fighting in a Hitchcock film.

It turned out they were both right: the armor-plated, laser-wielding men were probably super-soldiers, and Parkinson wasn't going to read about it in the paper. The soldiers didn't bother with his body when they herded the rest of them inside. They would have ignored Klepper, too, if Jones hadn't heaved him up and carried the boy slung across his shoulders. Ewling shrieked, struggled – probably still in Operation Cellophane, being shot at with normal guns and blown up by mines – and Bucky spun around in time to feel the difference between warm blood and icy rain against his face.

Then they dragged Martin off Parkinson, and Bucky had to pin the corporal's arms to keep him from swinging at their captors. He hoped they would ignore the steady stream of invective, or that they didn't speak enough English to know what Martin was calling their mothers. Martin radiated heat through his clothes and against Bucky's chest, and if the corporal couldn't stop shuddering it didn't affect his efforts to wrest himself away and hit something.

No one bothered to separate them, which would have given the sergeant pause if he hadn't been focused on Martin. Then the soldiers corralled them into a room already bursting with men, and the wayward muscle under his eye lurched in alarm. Bucky supposed that if he had armor and lasers he wouldn't be concerned about some unwashed, unarmed humans, either. They slammed the cell door, leaving the remains of the 107 th to stare at the men pressed against the far wall.

“What,” wondered Morita hoarsely, arm still hooked over Dawkins' shoulders, “is going on?”

“We're not entirely sure,” answered a man with a mustache that obscured his entire mouth, but didn't hide his British accent at all. “But you ought to back away from that door, they're taking -”

And then they did, opening the door and pulling Martin through it. Of course – since he hadn't let go of the corporal – that meant dragging Bucky out, too, giving him just enough time to catch Esposito's horrified face. At least Klepper wasn't conscious: Bucky didn't want to know how many men they were short of now.

“Don't give them anything,” Martin hissed into Bucky's ear, tilting his head up and spilling warm air against the sergeant's damp cheek. “Not a single goddamned smoke.” He didn't have time to reply before everything went black.

~*~

There had been enough dreaming _his serial number faded into his name that was another name that he had shouted the time he had broken a wrist landing under another boy, the pain sharpening the feel of laughter huffed into his shoulder that he had twisted in a fight, headlights in an alley that rose into the air, a flying car that crashed down on top of him, crushing his ribs and making him scream_ that when Bucky opened his eyes and saw the sketch from his pocket he decided to close them again. Maybe it would become breakfast over ruined comic strips, Mr. Shimkus' week-old sausages and bread that had been falling out of mean Mrs. Aaronowitz's bag. The sketch shook him and started speaking in English. He twitched, pressed his arm up into the restraints . . . and nearly flipped over when they weren't there to stop him.

When he opened his eyes, the sketch seemed busy trying to maneuver him off the table. “What do you want?” he croaked, and the face shot up, frowning as though bemused by the question.

“Bucky -” _James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant, Seriennummer drei-zwei-fünf_ “- you have to snap out of this and get moving. And speak English.” He must have said something, because then he was up and they were pounding down hallways and the fire licking at his bare feet meant that there wasn't time to throw open every door to find his corporal, the way he had once when the man had gone missing in a brothel. Bucky's search had spilled frippery and half-dressed women and soldiers into the halls. Someone had looked wrong at someone else's broad, and the camp commandant had found his troops in a silken, lacy brawl. This go-round there wasn't time to do anything but follow, to leap out of the inferno and into the night.

He recognized Esposito first, but only because the pale shape threw itself at him as soon as they were clear of the debris. Bucky spun away from the blue giant behind him and let the private blubber into his shoulder. The tears stung as they dripped down his chest. “Who is that?” the sketch asked someone beside him, the soft tenor of his voice rolling easily across the field.

“That's Private First Class Francesco Esposito from the 107th,” Morita's voice shot back, “But who the hell are you, boss?” Bucky didn't need to see his soldier to know his arms were folded, dark eyes hardly visible in the crease of his frown. He shifted to release the private – to see the answers to a few of his own questions – and the ground rose up to meet him.

~*~

False dawn lightened the sky into a violet haze. Bucky's hand had sprawled off the blanket and into the chill of dew-dampened grass. Patting the blanket revealed it to be a trench coat, or a large jumpsuit. Someone had wrangled him into ill-fitting fatigues and boots. Very nice boots that he had once extricated woolen socks from, and hidden coffee rations in the toes. He scrambled away from the scent of Parkinson's cologne, but it came with him, threaded through the spare clothes and into the soles of the shoes. Their packs must have survived the explosion; though Bucky's certainly hadn't, since he'd used it as a shield when he came running in from his futile post as sniper.

There were two pairs of eyes on him: he met Jones', noting that the man seemed unworried that someone was peering through the skin on Bucky's neck. “Good morning, Sarge,” the private offered, swinging around and cradling his weapon, nodding at his superior while scanning the trees.

Barnes leaned forward, curling into the burst of pain from his ribs and away from the thudding ache in his shoulders. He draped an arm over his bent knee and lifted his eyebrows, waiting for Jones to glance back at him.

Gabe's back straightened and he began his report. “Ruffles is gone.” They were the two squadrons in Parkinson's platoon, supposed to be twenty crack troops instead of fourteen exhausted young men. Together they were Ruffles and Lace, named in the aftermath of what their lieutenant had called the Battle for the Bordello. “They went in first, and none of them were in the factory with us. We lost Parkinson and Ewling in the first assault.” Jones voice didn't quaver, but he stopped to swallow. Somewhere above them, a nest of birds decided to serenade the rising sun.

“Maehr's platoon was supposed to reinforce us, but I think they pulled back after sending in the first squadron.” Bucky tilted his head to the left, and Jones responded, “At least Robbins and Levinksi got dropped -” There was no need to ask how he knew that: Bucky could smell the rot over the lingering scent of gunpowder and molten metal. Clearly they weren't the first troops to be sent to their deaths. “- and Corporal Breche was in the factory with us. So was most of Company C.

“They pulled you and Martin out, then took Breche and another man. They weren't interested in me or Jim or Frank, and Klepper's been unconscious the whole time.” Jones paused and jammed his rifle butt against his boot. “We hid Dawkins under Klepper and behind Morita. If we hadn't, maybe they wouldn't have taken Breche.” _Because they would have taken Dawkins instead_. Dark eyes explained the rest of it: Bucky thought it a fair trade, but Corporal Breche's soldiers likely wouldn't, if any of them were still alive. The sergeant glanced around, watching the unfamiliar, charcoal-streaked men stir around him. “They're from all over. British army, French resistance – I think some of them are German. This HYDRA factory isn't .. . it's . . . What did they want, Sarge?”

The breath Bucky pulled in tugged at the shallow, precise wounds down his chest and expanded the pain into his veins and all along his body. He lifted his hand to gesture behind him, inciting a guilty intake of breath. Jones gaze narrowed. “He says he's Steve Rogers. He says that you know him.” The words hung in the misty air, waiting for someone to confirm or deny them. “He rescued . . .us.” Jones had a way of rolling out words that kneaded disbelief into their crest and fall. Bucky looked away, and the private hummed softly in acknowledgment. “Is he German? What did they want him for?”

The sergeant shook his head and learned that there had been needles plunged into the skin around his jugular, tiny scabs tugging and tearing as he moved. “If he's not German, then – oh.” Bucky had straightened, knowing that Jones would see the tracks, would see the differences that he could feel bubbling out into his fingertips and down his legs. “I _knew_ no one looked like that.”

“Look -” And that was familiar: bony elbows and a wide mouth that spoke first and bled later. Bucky kept his gaze on Jones and let the voice curl over the tense lines of his shoulders like ink-stained fingers. “- you could just _ask_ him who I am.”

“I have been.” The indignant tone was well-suited to the expression on Jones' face. “Even a bad spy would know Sarge better than that,” the private muttered, “so you're probably just an imbecile.”

There likely would have been more to follow, but Sgt. Barnes had the information he needed. He spotted Morita, mud streaked across one cheek and ash in his black hair. The boy from Alabama was next to him, pale enough that his freckles stood out like pinpoints on a map, bordered by the dark rings below his eyes and the swollen, red scrape down his chin. When Bucky rose to wake them his leg folded neatly back onto itself and the world momentarily narrowed to filling his lungs with air and waiting for the pulsing lights to clear away from his vision. There was movement behind him, but he pulled himself up and limped toward his men without looking back.

Because apparently a staff sergeant who had yet to make his twentieth birthday was the best the U.S. Army had at the moment, Bucky managed to rouse most of their motley soldiers. They were going to have to carry Klepper back, as well as at least another ten or so of the men. He wasted a solid minute picking his way over the meadow after catching sight of his lieutenant's hair. Parkinson hated reveille, insisted that no dignified person rose before nine. He would be furious at Barnes for waking him, though at least he wouldn't gripe about it all day like Martin, who would . . .be dead. The stench from the field – the impromptu cemetery – wafted into his nose, and Bucky gagged.

While he stood there trying not to breathe, the colossus in the blue costume gathered up the men and began some speech about haste and stealth. He was right: there was no time and the ground around Bucky was already putrid with old decay. They needed to be gone, through the forest and over the line before more soldiers arrived in the factory's wake, and dead men had no care for their own graves.

Esposito appeared a moment later holding their camp shovels. Dawkins was using Morita and Jones as crutches, making good time. Bucky's hands were already caked with mud, and Parkinson would have been horrified at the state of his helmet. When Bucky next paused to catch his breath the field had sprouted men, sifting the allies from the enemies and burying their dead. They pinned on the lieutenant's medals, and Bucky said nothing about the dog tags still around his neck. Ewling they let be; hands still for the first time in months. Esposito prayed in Latin, Dawkins drawled out an amen. Jones quoted something with peace and courage. Bucky unfolded Martin's garish quilt and Morita helped him spread it over the wet earth. Then they were interrupted by the faint whine of planes, and a voice from Bucky's past ordered the men to round up and get moving.

~*~

The sketch from Bucky's pocket was named Captain America. He easily outpaced the rest of them, though Morita asserted that this was due to their general level of exhaustion and not his super powers. “We've been buried in foxholes, not in the chorus.” His tone fell short of his words, and he kept glancing ahead to the front of the line. “Sure is built for combat, though,” Jim admitted, and he was soon in happy conference with the captain about flanking procedures and guerrilla tactics. “Where have they been keeping this fella?” he asked Bucky, dropping back to the rear when Captain America moved to talk to some of the French soldiers. “Put him in charge and maybe we'd actually win this war.”

Bucky rubbed at the tic in his cheek and didn't say anything about New York, or keeping people safe. Parkinson's tags clicked together on their chain, quieting when he tightened cold fingers around them. Morita took silence as permission to inform him about Captain America's past adventures in the USO.

“Were you really best friends with that giant?” Jim wondered, dark eyes disbelieving. No, he hadn't grown up with Captain America. No one had. “I didn't think so. He says he didn't use to look like this, that . . .” He trailed off as the subject of conversation strode toward them. It would be the third time in the last hour he had battered his way over, pushing at Barnes' space with muscles the way a gawky boy had once done with words. Bucky's eye twitched.

Morita, however, was content to answer all interrogations about their unit and their operations and how they had ended up as rats in a research lab run by a man with no face. “Can't Bucky speak for himself?” Captain America finally snapped, running large hands through blond hair. The private started and frowned, probably trying to ascertain who “Bucky” was.

“Of course he can, but you're not listening.” Bucky had expected Jones, not the warble of Dawkins' voice as he loped along sandwiched between Expo and Gabe. If they made it back to camp, the army was going to have to send the boy home. They might need to clear an extra berth for his mouth, though.

“Listening to what?” Captain America's voice hitched on the last word, and the crack was a relief in the expanse of perfection. There had been a time in New York when every third sentence had gone girlish and broken, leading to a month where they hadn't been in any fights because Steve was too embarrassed to speak. Bucky shoved the name where he'd wadded up the fire in his left knee, the missing inch of skin that ran from collarbone to hip, and the blank expression on Parkinson's face. If he pushed them all down far enough he could still breathe.

“Well, he don't seem too fond of you,” Dawkins offered, jutting his chin out with an ease that bespoke of how often it stuck out too far. He would drop faster than a sack of cornmeal if the giant socked him. “But, ahm, he ain't shot you yet?” If that was as near as Dawkins came to conciliatory, it was a wonder he'd lived long enough to be drafted.

“He doesn't hate you.” Esposito dodged out from under Dawkins' arm and presented the captain with a slight, cerulean flower. From his own enormous jumpsuit. “Wouldn't have left you his favorite flower if he did.”

Captain America lifted the flower, bemusement unfurling over his face. The petals blended into the irises of his eyes, and he tugged the rest of the flowers out of his pocket without looking down. His quiet, “I didn't know -” probably hadn't been intended for any of them, but for the sudden increase in volume when he realized the only thing in his pocket were flowers. “That was my radio!”

“Your _radio_?”

“In your _pocket_?” Morita gaped, and Bucky gave a significant look at the other man's jacket. Jim obligingly dug slender fingers into its folds and pulled out a metallic object no bigger than his palm. “This is a radio?”

Martin would have said it came from Mars. Ewling would have assumed it was a grenade – well, so had Bucky. Parkinson would have given it to Leonards to disassemble, declaring it part of his plumber's apprenticeship. The furious dressing-down carved into Bucky's thoughts. “You can't just go around stealing important pieces of equipment. . .” The captain's voice grew fainter as Barnes angled away from it, heading for the large Frenchman who had Klepper draped over his shoulders. He didn't need anyone to recount his failings for him.

They made it back over the line without speaking. The captain had approached once more, mouth already open to apologize: Bucky's expression must have made his opinion clear, because the man spun back around and went to talk to Jones instead. He culled out words without thinking; Jones and the mustached Limey had Dawkins between them, and they were all straggling at the back of the ragged line. “Did someone piss in your tankard?” the Brit asked coolly, staring at the blond's face. Jones snorted, and Dawkins laughed out loud.

Captain America ignored them, lost in his own inquiries. “Is he always like this?” he demanded, glowering at Dawkins as though the gangly teenager was to blame. Considering Dawkins' personality, it was a clear possibility.

The other soldier's mustache tugged down in confusion, but Jones swung his head around to meet the newcomer's gaze without blinking. “Wouldn't you know better than we would?” His expression, like his voice, gave no hint of the reproach Bucky could hear wrapped around his words. “You _grew up together_ , after all.”

There was a lull in the conversation when someone near the front shouted, “Mines!” in the same instant that the ground lurched up in a torrent of dirt and thunder and saplings. Barnes wasn't close enough to see any more: the man was buried and gone by the time he filed past, following careful tracks through the thinning cover of trees and the old ruts of shrapnel and bombs.

“We didn't exactly go to Basic together, you know?” Morita was explaining as they fanned back out through uprooted and limbless trees. “All the guys who did, well . . .”

“They're not talking,” Dawkins clarified with a snort that became a yelp when Morita elbowed him in the ribs. “Well, dead fellas don't.”

“They're _all_ dead?” Bucky edged his way around some undetonated ordnance, focused on finding the easiest path and not on Captain America's face. It was all written into his tone, anyway. It always had been.

“No, of course not.” Morita exhaled, looked around and made a considering noise. “Klepper's still breathing.” Jim lifted a shoulder at the displeased huff in reply. “Well, it's better than telling you, 'Yes, Lace Squad's last man standing is Sarge, and he's sure not going to talk, neither.'”

“He's Sarge.” Dawkins broke into the conversation from the captain's left before Morita could say anything else. “There's nothing wrong with him just 'cause he don't want to talk to you.” He dragged pale eyes up from Captain America's muddy boots to his clean hair and sneered. “I don't blame him.”

Fortunately for Dawkins, Jones appeared beside them and glowered the rest of the squad into silence before Esposito could add his share of belligerence. “Nobody writes to Sarge,” he mentioned, as though they were all just discussing the oddities of James Barnes' life in combat. Jones was no sharpshooter, but he had superb aim at close range. Broad shoulders tightened under blue fabric. “Harry's ma writes everyday, and Jim's dame tries to send him entire bakeries.”

“Somewhere, Private Jim Morita is eating all my damn cake,” Morita growled, and then smirked at the blond's confusion. “All my mail goes to the Pacific front. But it's still for me.”

“Frank's entire family writes letters,” Jones continued, speaking over the tail of Morita's explanation. Esposito blushed and took on the mournful expression he wore when someone brought up his family. Soon they would be comparing recipes for meatballs and cornbread. “Of course, his grandmother writes in Italian, and Frank can't read Italian -”

“They censor it all,” Dawkins pointed out. “Probably think we're Eye-talian spies.”

“- but she writes a letter a week. My neighbors tell me about their boy in the Air Force, and my Laura clips out news articles to send.” Bucky knew he should step in before they actually insulted the man that rescued them, but it seemed rude to barge into a conversation about him. Still, they didn't know how thin the skin under that costume was.

“It's not like Bucky can . . .” The remonstrance in Jones' eyes brought Captain America's enormous shoulders nearly to his ears, and he scrubbed a hand across his face. “I was top-secret,” he added, voice as weak as the argument. “There wasn't anything I could say.”

“Maybe that's it, then,” Dawkins said. “It's not that Sarge doesn't want to talk to you, but he's top-secret.”

They stumbled into camp before Esposito had stopped laughing, and Bucky proved he could rally behind a cause as well as anyone. He was in the infantry – no one was asking for his opinion.

~*~

It took Captain America three hours to find Bucky in the med tent where he was playing poker with his squadron and a few of the other men from the factory. The Army had supplied the medical corp with stacks of cards and leaflets warning soldiers against returning home with unwanted guests. “Straight flush!” Esposito declared, tossing his cards down in triumph.

“Jack, queen . . .'only you can prevent syphilis'.” Morita cleared his throat. “Is that a wild card?”

“Sarge!” Bucky shrugged and laid out his four kings, cocking his head to listen to the shuffle of large feet in the entrance. They were short enough on morphine that they didn't argue when he'd refused it, and the fresh pain from wounds reopened and examined put his senses on alert.

The voice came from just behind him, hesitant to breach the easy circle they'd made across three beds. “I, uh, wouldn't play poker with him,” it said, above Bucky's head. He almost reached back to tug the other man down to their level. “He's marked the deck.”

“With anti-sex propaganda?” suggested one of the Brits, chucking his threes and an imperative to keep himself pure for marriage into the pile. “Come on, boys. The only vice we've got left may be the medicinal alcohol.” He squinted fiercely at the sergeant. “Unless you've stashed that somewhere, too?” Bucky leaned back, stretching his fingers under his cot to catch on the bottle of scotch that had been hidden in the commander's desk, head brushing against the edge of a military uniform. He bit down on the vertigo and let the hand between his shoulder blades pivot him back up. “Oho! For that, you can keep the whole pile of aspirin.”

Jones suggested they find somewhere more clandestine to drink, watchful brown eyes shifting between his sergeant and the man behind him. He was summarily ignored by the rest of the party until Barnes nodded and shook their impromptu poker chips back into the canister. Other than the harsh, erratic sound of Klepper's breathing, their corner of the med tent was deserted. It smelled of disinfectant and starched cotton, and after months of dirt and bodies and black powder Bucky couldn't catch his breath.

“Are you all right?” Startled by the question – _What happened? What did you learn? Well, are you going to say something?_ \- Bucky looked up and saw Steve. Behind the Army-issued uniform and physique there was the same concerned slant to pale eyebrows and hand hovering between them that there always had been when Bucky got hurt. Of course, it was usually Steve's fault.

He shrugged the shoulder that hadn't been dislocated, shifting up on the cot to make room. When the other man sat down Bucky worried that they would both end up on the floor, under the weight of Captain America's smile if not the rest of him. The flash of white prompted him to search for words, but Steve spoke before he could find any.

“I'm – I meant to write to you.” There was nothing to say to that, so Bucky shrugged and pressed white fingerprints into the raw, pink skin of his wrist. Captain America tried to tuck up into himself the way Steve had once physically avoided his apologies, and nearly kneed Bucky in the chest. “I did write you . . but they wouldn't have let me send them.” He gave a quiet cough, exhaling, “And I didn't want anyone else to read them,” into his ham-sized fist.

The anger banding Sgt. Barnes' ribs squeezed the next words out. “Because you were going to novelist school.” He bit down hard on his already bloody lip, but Steve's face darkened from the words hanging unspoken in the air. Steve hadn't wanted Bucky to foot the bills for art school: it was an old wound with a new face.

“I never asked for your help.” Steve had shouted the words, often over rooftops from their window, as Bucky had run from the fight the quickest way he knew how. Captain America rumbled with them, trying to whisper, and the med tent had no fire escapes for Bucky to leap over and away. “If you want me to pay you back, I can. The Army's -”

“Shut up.” Steve's lips were the same: still thin, and pursed into a furious pout that tended to mean they were going to get pummeled in short order. Bucky sighed and focused on unfamiliar hands and arms that must have been built from spare tank parts. He didn't want the Army's money. He didn't want the Army's – but there was no use in beginning that list. Bucky Barnes had learned a lifetime ago that wanting was for people who could afford it.

And for Steve, who never seemed to realize that boys like them kept their heads down and their hands curled shut. “I did write you, though. You should see how I inked the doctor. And there was this HYDRA assassin, and there's this . . .” The broad face bore a clear resemblance to Steve's in its deep red flush, from collarbone to hairline. “Woman.” Bucky hiked up an eyebrow and watched Captain America have an improbable asthma attack. Then he shrugged and unfolded the sheets of paper that had been bundled into fatigues, his gaze even. Steve had complained that Bucky had eyes like mirrors, impossible to draw; the reflections moving mercury-bright over a blue sheen.

“Wait!” The unfamiliar giant on the cot lunged for the comics, having forgotten in a year what a six-year-old Steve Rogers could have told him; there were no secrets from James Buchanan Barnes. He ended up propped against Bucky's right side, where Steve had always shoved himself so that he could mask the desire for approval bared in his face. But Captain America's bulk bent Bucky's wrenched shoulder into the metal bar behind him, a chorus-line strongman overflowing the place meant for a gangling, bellicose youth. There was a woman, lithe and redheaded, if the comic matched the reality, but there was no Steve Rogers waiting in New York.

The sketches were familiar. He had seen the Hitler drawn and foiled countless times in the past few years, carried Captain America in his pocket for months. Even the woman took after the smudged pin-ups that had littered their apartment, and Steve had caricatured himself often enough that the short, freckled runt was the closest Bucky would probably get to a picture of a boy that had grown up beyond all measure. Bucky wasn't in a single frame.

“So,” he forced out when the extremely heavy silence became fidgety and threatened to re-dislocate his shoulder. His free hand skittered across a retelling of Steve's time at Basic, the dame all curves and fists. “Peggy Carter, British envoy?” He was expecting Steve to blush or squirm, not jerk upright and stare slack-jawed at him.

“Bucky.” He reconsidered his words and decided that Steve's shock was, in fact, unmerited. Being British might not be an asset, but Martin's dame . . . “I didn't tell you her name.”

It was hard to hear Steve over the pounding in his ears as he fought to swallow. Her name was Mary Margaret, and she made collages. There was Tom in a tree, Parkinson's broad – and then he realized that Steve hadn't told him Carter's name, that it was printed in small letters above her head, and Bucky leaned over the side of the cot to vomit into the bed pan, the sound of liquid against metal soft compared to the noise vibrating through his head.

~*~

“You think the Red Skull is building super-soldiers?” Colonel Phillips' voice was calm. Bucky ignored the condescension in it, since that meant nothing but that it was Phillips speaking. He would have liked to see his superior, but he was occupied hiding under the man's desk with his second-best bottle of gin. He didn't imagine the colonel's face would have shown much besides outrage if he stuck his head out. “And you're basing this theory on Sgt. Barnes' ability to _read_?”

“This fellow's clearly mistaken, Colonel.” Bucky could almost hear teeth grinding: Steve had never liked being insulted, and Maj. Shankman tended to rake his eyes over new recruits like a man inspecting a bad crop of horseflesh. At least, that's what Parkinson had said, before he'd had to explain to the squad that horseflesh had nothing to do with butcher shops. “The U.S. Army doesn't promote backwards, unlearned truants.” Barnes winced. When his second-grade teacher had called him that Steve had shouted at her until she got out the ruler, and then he had dragged Bucky out of the classroom and into fourth grade. Steve now was a little less squeaky, and a lot larger.

“What the major means,” Lt. Maehr darted in, verbally insinuating himself between Shankman and the expression on Captain America's face, “is that Barnes hasn't got any problems reading. Heck, he knows the Field Manual better than any of us. . .” Maehr had never been an idiot, though, and Bucky knew there was a frown playing at the corners of the man's mouth.

“Because he memorized it.” Steve would know. He was the one who'd had to read until his voice gave out about scouting and drill formations and weaponry. The noise Maehr made in response meant that the lieutenant had finally slotted everything together, and realized why Barnes' reports had always dripped with Parkinson's upper-class disdain.

“Nobody memorizes the manual,” another voice retorted. First Lieutenant Poczak, who smelled like sauerkraut. “And how's he writing his reports, then? He always knows exactly what's in them, word for word.” Maehr must have rolled his eyes, because Poczak cut himself off, and no one jumped in to fill the silence. Apparently it had occurred to them that they didn't know their own reports that well – that no one did, unless they had to. Bucky also knew the serial numbers for his entire squadron, the contents of every classified document Parkinson had seen, and several of Shakespeare's plays that Steve had studied in school, but _Twelfth Night_ probably wasn't that important to them and still didn't make that much sense to Bucky.

“He's been in the Army for two years and nobody noticed this?” Phillips bypassed condescension and swung right into anger. Sgt. Barnes considered offering the officers their gin to lessen the sting.

“It hasn't been two years.” Maehr tried to cover his amusement by coughing. Maj. Shankman was probably glaring at him, but paused to think of a better riposte. Bucky's legs were starting to cramp, and if the meeting didn't end soon the alcohol-deprived privates waiting in the med tent might stage a riot. “Well, his unit must have known. Parkinson was always too soft -”

The colonel's desk made a thunderous noise as it flipped over, and the men at the table all went for their sidearms. Bucky didn't look back, but Shankman wouldn't be saying anything else for a few minutes anyway – at least until he regained consciousness. More than enough time to reach the med tent and break out the gin.

~*~

Captain America arrived just as the alcohol ran out, a scowl on his face. The disapproval in blue eyes was enough to remind the men that they were drinking on the front lines of a war, again. Though considering how many men they had crowded into the tent, one bottle from the colonel's liquor cabinet was not going to lose them the war. If Steve Rogers had frowned like that, the burly Frenchman would have laughed him back out of the tent. Captain America cleared them all out with a disappointed sigh and a rapidly dwindling buzz.

“Bucky.” Given the opportunity, the USO front man probably would have dressed the sergeant down for knocking out an officer.

Bucky forestalled that by stripping his shirt off and handing over a jar of noxious ointment. The medics seemed to think it was helping with whatever it was on his back that felt like he'd laid on a bed of broken glass. They had a mirror in the camp, but if the way Steve gasped and stilled was an indication, it wasn't something he needed to see.

“Bucky,” he said again, with none of the castigation that had been there before. One large hand smoothed down Bucky's back while the other tightened shakily around his waist. Captain America's hands were hot against his skin, the chill damp of the air slipping between his fingertips. In another world, Steve Rogers bound up his friend's bruised ribs, thin hands clammy and cold. “I'm so, so -”

It was easier to unroll the map of possible HYDRA facilities that Colonel Phillips thought was locked in his desk than to listen to Captain America hand out apologies Bucky wasn't looking for. Both the apology and the blood flow to Bucky's left hip were cut off abruptly, though the hand rubbing salve into his back stayed gentle. “You -” the captain paused to cough “- borrowed the colonel's map?”

Bucky pointed to a question mark scrawled somewhere in the north, biting down on the vertigo from all of the _words_ : countries and rivers and mountain ranges demanding to be named. Steve made a considering noise and leaned forward to look, right hand still dragging up and down Bucky's spine.

The sergeant shook him off and tugged his shirt back on. He didn't wince when moving his shoulders jarred all his bones, or when the fabric clung to the ointment and he could feel the cotton weave against every open wound.

“Why do you think he's gone there?” Steve wondered, wiping his hand on the musty sheet. When Martin was in hospital in England the sheets had been starched into solid, white squares, like the nurses' uniforms. The corporal had said they were pretty, but not very welcoming in bed, just like the nurses.

Shrugging dislodged Steve's chin from where it had settled on his shoulder. He used his fingers to bracket Nazi territory, the possible mark almost in the center. Undeterred, Steve dropped his head back into the concavity between Bucky's shoulder bone and the curve of his neck. If Bucky turned his head an inch to the left -

“Won't he be trying to reinforce the bases _near_ the borders, instead? Or go on the offensive?”

There was stubble grazing Bucky's ear. It didn't prevent him from rolling his eyes. He sighed loudly enough to make his point, and then risked the words to point out where Allied troops were sitting too close to each border.

Steve snorted and the whole bed shook. “You think a lot of his cowardice.” Then he hummed and leaned in, bending them both closer to the map. Bucky stared resolutely at the Atlantic Ocean: a vast, letter-less blue. “Do you think they're all factories? If he wanted more . . .” _Captain Americas_ , Barnes filled in silently. “Then why did they kill the doctor? They should have stolen the formula.”

That statement drew Bucky's attention back to the map, his mind scanning through the newspapers Parkinson had read to them in the evenings. None of them had mentioned a hideously disfigured megalomaniac, but, “The power in your serum, in objects. He's -”

“I was told you didn't speak.” The red of her lips and hair came straight from Steve's comics, but the real-life version was less pin-up than Army, from the bayonet of her heels to the angle of her cap. She wasn't pulling any punches, either.

In New York, Bucky Barnes had been charming and debonair. In Italy, he had been dashing and mysterious. Agt. Carter's tight expression meant that he was currently infuriating. Bucky slid into a smirk and didn't flinch when Steve fumbled away from him.

At least that took her attention off Bucky – and wasn't that a first. “Sgt. Barnes,” Steve stuttered out, cheeks going pink, “this is Agent Carter.”

“Peggy,” the woman corrected, but Bucky knew that if he called her Peggy he would be busted back down to private in a heartbeat. “I believe we met, briefly, when Barnes looted Colonel Phillips' tent.”

Bucky pulled his knees up and rested his arms across them. He tilted his head and watched her contempt waver under his silence. “What, you won't converse with anyone but Capt. Rogers?” Carter had felled men with that smile. Dorothea in the tenement below them had smiled like that, and she hadn't run out of coffee or sugar since the war had begun. “How quaint.”

“Bucky and I were just discussing where the Red Skull might have gone.” And there was Steve, puffing out his chest in front of a pretty broad, trying to look less like a chum, trying to play the hero. Bucky rubbed his eyes and forced himself to look up. Captain America wasn't _playing_ anyone.

“Yes, of course.” Carter's tone was bland, but her crimson moue suggested that the captain would be better off conversing with the bed pans. “The colonel wants to confirm your plans and begin reassigning men to your squadron.” One eyebrow arched delicately. “I'm certain Mr. Barnes will be well provided for here.”

“Sergeant Barnes,” Bucky corrected, in a lighter tone that came from the air above him instead of from his own mouth. Directly above him, with a hand landing on his shoulder. “I'll be right there, Agent- Peggy.” Her milky complexion was not suited for the glow that overtook it. Bucky dug his teeth into his upper lip. “Let me talk about the team with Bucky, first, since it'll be his team, too.” The agent and the sergeant looked similarly befuddled, but they both recognized dismissal. Carter nodded curtly and strode away; Bucky watched blue eyes follow the swing of her hips.

Tilting his head and his eyebrow, Bucky waited for Captain America to cotton on. When he did, he averted his eyes rapidly enough that Bucky expected them to bounce back. He also went a gratifying shade of fuchsia.“She was delivering a message from Phillips.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. It also would never occur to Steve Rogers that a dame could be after _him_. The thought floated up from his chest like a Macy's balloon, catching in his throat. “You're still a bit of a dim bulb, Stevie.”

Wrinkles appeared and vanished from Captain America's forehead in moments, replaced by a smile that made Bucky blink hard. The hand at his shoulder shifted up and squeezed the back of his neck. “I really missed -” Steve never finished the sentence, leaving the other man to the possibilities. Insults? Nicknames? The hair on the back of Bucky's neck? “So who else are we dragging into this alley? I like that guy with you – the loudmouth.”

Barnes shook his head hard, glowering at Captain America as he sat back down and the mattress rearranged for him. The incline of a golden head conceded the point, and Bucky swept his hand out to include Klepper. They turned in unison to look at the cot in the corner of the tent, but Klepper had yet to wake. “And Esposito,” he added, lining up the words. “They're too young for this.”

“And you're what? Pushing twenty?” Bucky's argument had no chance to take wing before Steve made his own. “I can't – you're coming, Bucky.” Steve's cerulean gaze bored holes in the hospital sheets, and he hurried on. “What about the other guys in your unit?”

He contemplated this, then nodded. Morita thought hurling himself into gunfire was a way to pass the time, and Jones had an eye for strategy. Ewling would have to go home, of course, but Martin's sense of humor reminded them that a bad joke could be more atrocious than warfare. . . Only it couldn't, after all. Barnes' cheek bled where he chewed through it, tasting like the bright pennies scattered in a congressman's wake. Steve smiled at him and kept talking while Bucky licked Ewling's blood from his rain-slicked lips.

~*~

The screaming started a few hours later. The Carter woman had fetched Steve before he could recruit everyone they had ever met – she had interrupted the soliloquy on their Jewish butcher's talents in diplomacy and knife-wielding – and the men had reappeared to lose at cards until the medic lost all his aspirin-chips and kicked them out. Bucky had fallen asleep to the stuttering rhythm of Klepper's breathing and the throb in his knee. He woke up in the pitch black, muscles tensed, trying to pinpoint where the screaming had come from. Then Steve and two other men hurtled into the tent, light from outside gleaming off their weapons, and the realization scraped against his raw throat. It was him. The noise had come from him.

“Bucky!” Steve's hands clamped down on his upper arms, face tight with worry. “What happened?” Somebody brought in a flashlight, and Bucky's shoulders eased when he saw Jones and Morita.

Esposito stumbled in a moment later, rubbing his eyes with one hand and holding his sidearm with the other. “Are we under attack?” His black, curly hair puffed out in a backlit haze; he used the sidearm to cover his yawn. He didn't look very professional, but then, the Lace Squad had spent months listening to- “Where's Ewling? Did Sarge have to hit him again?”

“No, because he's been shot by Nazi robots.” There was Dawkins, his mouth preceding him into the room. “Are you asleep or just slow?” He limped up to Morita, who grudgingly tugged him over and swatted him before propping him up. “What was that yowling, if not Ewling?”

Jones stared at Bucky, who was still attempting to suck enough saliva from his parched mouth to swallow. He shook his head, and the dark-skinned man turned away. “Must've been a screech owl.” Morita cawed in response, sounding more like a pigeon than an owl. “C'mon boys, let's go back to our beds while we've got them.”

“Could've been an alley cat,” Esposito's back popped as he stretched. They had always accused Ewling of sounding like an angry squirrel, or a horde of finches.

“That's the most preposterous -” That voice was British, the same hulking man that had carried Klepper halfway back. Morita slapped him on the shoulder to spin him around; the Limey acquiesced with a groan. “Right you are, then. Owl cats. Perhaps a defiant tortoise, as well.”

His men were still right outside the tent, soft voices dissuading anyone else from entering. Bucky's fingers were spasming in the khaki of his trousers, and there were going to be bruises on his biceps from Steve's grip. “Bucky, was there someone in the tent? Did you hear something?” How was he supposed to explain it to a man draped in blue fabric and chorus girls? Defeating Hitler twice a week wasn't the sort of fight that seared through someone's eyelids or singed off their lashes. Bucky pulled away. Burying his face in the pillow wasn't going to keep him from screaming, but it kept him from the knowledge in blue eyes.

~*~

Phillips finally cornered him three days after their arrival in Britain. They had left Italy at night. Esposito had spouted some New York Italian – Bucky was fairly certain the word 'lasagna' had featured prominently – and bent to kiss the ground. Dawkins spat, and Morita gave a different sort of salute. Jones helped load Klepper's stretcher into the plane, which was apparently another creation by the slick man that couldn't make flying cars. Having recognized Howard Stark, it wasn't that surprising when the engines cut out over enemy territory. The smell of bile did not make the remainder of their voyage any more pleasant.

Klepper, Dawkins, and Esposito had vanished hours after they touched down in Scotland. The other men were still asleep. Bucky watched from the doorway of the bunker as two medics moved Klepper and Esposito hauled Dawkins along. The colonel was marching steadily in front of them, and didn't see Esposito kick out his comrade's ankle and send them both toppling to the ground. They turned and waved, silhouettes in the rose of dawn, and Dawkins hissed, “Bye, Sarge!” loudly enough to alert Phillips to their predicament. After Stark had loaded them all up and taken off, Bucky had followed their tracks in the wet grass. Where they'd fallen he found two packs of cigarettes, filled with flowers. He traded them with Jones and Morita's packs, and Gabe had come down for breakfast with a pocket full of violets.

Nobody asked where the others had gone. Nobody had said much, in fact, since if they weren't shouting out warnings ( _Mine! What's yours? No,_ mine! _Of course there's a mine, I'm trying to lay the goddamned thing - where's the manual?! You mean the one for getting laid?_ ) they were trying to catch their breaths for the next bout of training. The first night Barnes had shared a room with the Frog, Dernier, and Morita. When he'd staggered in from pacing the perimeter all night the beds had been redistributed, two to a room. Nobody wasted their air wondering why Captain America had to share, or why he and Bucky were at the opposite end of the corridor. Bucky waited until Steve fell asleep to jam the pillowcase into his own mouth, but if Colonel Phillips' face was anything to go by -

“Sergeant Barnes.”

Barnes saluted, then refocused on unhooking himself from his parachute. His team was miles away, scattered across Scottish moors and likely trying to pry the nettles from parachute silk. At least now he knew why Stark had delayed his jump: he'd landed perfectly, only a few feet away from Phillips' interrogation.

“You're not easy to track down.” Which wasn't true. Bucky was sitting through their cryptography classes and being flipped onto his back by Jujitsu masters along with the rest of them. What Phillips meant was that it could be difficult to see a man when a white-starred wall of blue sidled in front of him every time the colonel tried to approach. The corners of his mouth lifted as he folded the chute, working past the complaints of his knee. The isolation meant that no one had seen it buckle when he landed; the loose fit of their khakis meant that know one would know if it swelled to the size of Stark's ego.

“You helped Rogers build this team.” There were nettles everywhere, purple blooms and rent fabric. He worked his fingers gently around them, lifting them away. “What kind of men do you want fighting with Steve?”

Straightening, the sergeant folded his arms and made a conscious effort to unclench his jaw. Phillips had spent enough time with the 107th that he didn't even try to outlast his subordinate. “Let's try that again. Tell me who Captain America should have on his team, Sergeant.”

“Whoever he needs. Sir.” The scent of crushed nettles seeped from Bucky's fist.

Colonel Phillips looked as though he preferred Barnes with his mouth shut, but he grimaced and continued. “And you think he needs you?” Phillips' accent mimicked Dawkins', drawling the last word with a faint snort. “A _soldier_ who can't sleep through the night?”

No one had ordered him to answer that question, so Bucky focused on brushing purple tufts from his fingers. If he didn't look back up, he wouldn't see the triumph on the colonel's face. “You'll get him killed, boy, screaming for your mother.” Bucky turned to regard the training fields in the distance, his jumpy cheek out of Phillips' sight. When the colonel spoke again, he slathered his words like honey over fresh bread. “If you really want to help your friend, Sergeant, give him the men he needs.”

There was a jeep parked near them. Bucky returned to packing up his chute, fingers deftly tugging out all the scrub. He ignored the rough sound of the engine idling as he worked, and the thrum of expectation from behind the wheel. When he'd folded the parachute into his pack, he swung it onto his shoulder and began the long walk back to base.

~*~

A week had gone by before Bucky chose his replacement. He'd considered Carter for a heartbeat, but Steve would spend too much time mooning over her instead of fighting super-powered Nazis. Bucky wouldn't let that hurt, pushed down the fleeting touch of artist's hands and Martin's promise that he would get his girl, drowned it all in exhaustion and the last of Dugan's cigarettes. Also, Steve had never seemed to realize that most broads could look after themselves. So Carter was out. No one from New York could follow Captain America into battle without giggling, he assumed, as there were still days when Bucky waited for the muscles to come off with the costume and reveal the gawky man he knew. That left the other men from the 107th. Steve would like that, he had always wanted to join his dad's regiment. It was easier to recall their faces when he was sleeping, but the haze of blood and gunfire rendered that option both unappealing and inefficient. Finally he decided that Maehr would suffice. The lieutenant followed orders, but not to stupidity, and he hadn't reported Parkinson for keeping Morita and Jones against segregation orders.

He was packing when Steve came back from the meeting. Phillips had approved the suggestion, and Stark had offered to get Bucky back to New York by Friday night, with a lewd wiggle of his eyebrows. He hadn't said no, but if the colonel gave him a formal discharge by dinner he had at least eight hours before anyone wondered where he'd gone. Glasgow had docks and factories, Bucky knew from their covert training, and he'd worked both. There was nothing for him in New York, any more, no one waiting for him to come home.

“What are you doing?” Massive arms folded over Steve's pristine fatigues. Leonards had gotten so good at mending that he'd begun embroidering expletives into his uniform, smiling over his handiwork, face at odds with the “goddam nazis” sewn over his knee. Leonards, torn to pieces, sewn together for the ride home, the goddamn Nazis tattooed under Klepper’s pale skin.

It had always been pointless to pretend that Steve could hear anyone else until the steam stopped puffing from his ears, and Bucky neatly folded and stowed Jones' nicest shirt without acknowledging the imminent storm to his left. They'd been able to sit in on the Polish secret forces' – the Silent and Unseen, which had a much richer ring to it than the increasingly ridiculous names Dugan kept christening them with – lessons on false identity, which would make it much simpler for Sergeant James Barnes to go MIA.

“Why are you packing? Did Phillips say something to you? He won't tell me anything. Neither will Peggy. Bucky!” Steve hadn't intended to wrench Bucky around hard enough to send the dark-haired man toppling into his chest, that was clear from the astonished gasp and muttered, “Sorry! God, sorry,” while he tried to set Bucky back on his feet. In other regards, it did prevent the sergeant from packing anyone else's clothes into his rucksack.

Captain America's hands lingered, warming the Bucky's arms through his jacket. “What's going on, Buck? Nobody is going to make you leave.” The ugly tone in Captain America's threat was much more effective than Steve Rogers' howled indignation had been; it reverberated through Bucky's chest and down. He hadn't been this close to Steve since New York, two boys huddled in one bed, Bucky's fingers tracing the air over pale lips as Steve slept.

He jerked away, rolling his shoulders back. Steve's eyes were the color of the sky on the first day of spring, and welling with hurt. Bucky sighed. Scrubbing his face mitigated the force of Steve's scowl, likely because it highlighted the dark rings under Bucky's eyes. He shrugged, and Steve sighed and nodded, becoming more fluent in words Bucky didn't bother to say. So Bucky returned to packing, handing over Maehr's file for Steve to see.

That made the captain collapse onto Bucky's bed, which protested loudly. The rucksack all but disappeared under one massive thigh. “We'll put Maehr on the team, then, if you want.” Bucky lit a cigarette and sat on the far side of the bed in an attempt to even the weight. “We can pull Falsworth – I know he annoys you.” That was because the man had the vocabulary of a dictionary and the attitude of a king, but it didn't negate that the Limey was brilliant with weapons and handy in a fight. “Or Dernier.” Who knew the countryside better than any of them, and mixed explosives like he was making crème brulee.

He shook his head, barely visible through the widening circle of a smoke ring.

“Then you don't get to leave, either,” Steve retorted. The childish obstinacy in his voice contrasted sharply with the entreaty scrawled across his face. “The team needs you,” he averred, but a moment later his shoulders sagged as though he hadn't figured out how to carry them yet. “I need you,” admitted Steve Rogers, cheeks a blotchy red. He was probably worried about filling that costume: Captain America would never have said that.

They didn't need him. He was a liability, not an asset, and hitting a mark from hundreds of yards away didn't make him a superhero. Maehr would be better for the team, and Phillips wanted Barnes gone before someone got hurt . . .But Bucky hadn't said no to Steve since the first day when a coughing, towheaded boy had marched a sticky four-year old into a deli and made him apologize for stealing a Table-Top pie. He'd smudged one blueberry-coated hand over the boy's mouth in retaliation, and the shopkeeper had blamed them both. Bucky inhaled hard and let his lungs expand with smoke, then exhaled in defeat. “Phillips wouldn't like it,” he promised.

Despite this dire prophecy, Steve's face lit up like a Christmas tree and Bucky traced the lines of it with his eyes. There was the fine scar through his upper lip where it had been sliced open by a class ring and an angry football player, the long one running along his hairline from a flying trash can. Then the face came suddenly closer as Steve flopped onto his back, head thumping onto Bucky's thigh. “I'll tell him, don't worry. Just,” and Bucky was distracted from the warm weight on his leg by the hand that reached up to grip his bad knee, “just don't go anywhere, OK?”

~*~

Unfortunately, Captain America didn't snore, making it more difficult to tell when he finally fell asleep. Bucky guessed that it had something to do with the asthma, or the pneumonia, or the bronchitis, since Steve had a tendency to sleep with his mouth wide like a baby bird's, whistling air down his throat. His mouth was still open, and Bucky paused to lean down and wipe off the drool collecting at the corner of Steve's lips. The strap on the Army's rucksack dug into the tender muscles of his shoulder, and he scrubbed his hand off on the pillow, darting away before Captain America could wake up and wonder what his sergeant was doing. It wouldn't be the first night Bucky wasn't in his own bed, and Phillips probably expected him to be cleared out by morning no matter what the captain said about Barnes staying.

He laced up his boots in the hall, lit his cigarette a few steps from the front door, and nearly lost it when he tripped over the uniform sitting on the steps. The very fragrant uniform. Barnes didn't salute, but he did doff an imaginary hat. She might not be his superior anymore, but she was still a dame.

“Sergeant Barnes.” She kept her voice low, but pitched it to carry. “Going somewhere?” Her eyes deliberately drifted from his coat to the bag slung over his shoulder, her make-up perfect even in the godless hours of the night. Tailored green trousers crossed primly at the knee, tapering off into black heels. He wondered if she had to polish them every morning. “Spare me a cigarette, Sergeant, and a moment of your time.” There was no mistaking it for anything but an order, cloaked in the plum of her lips as they pursed around his cigarette and the red of her nails when she patted the step beside her. He sat, and stared into the dark. If he moved a little farther from the steps he could pretend to be standing watch, separating the sounds of the wind and the owls from the rumble of Martin's snores and Klepper murmuring in his sleep.

“Captain Rogers talks about you all the time,” Carter broke in, after Bucky finished his smoke and moved to stand. The snick of the lighter overlaid his soft, incredulous exhale. Captain America's comics and the sketchbook he'd been foolish enough to hide under his mattress were both in the rucksack. Bucky knew his own face well enough to recognize its absence. “When he was at Basic every day began with, 'Bucky said that his unit did this, and Bucky said that we ought to be using live fire'.” She paused and looked down at the stub of her cigarette, her profile a pale counter-image to Steve's sketches. “The day of the operation, he spent the whole morning pacing. 'I'm not sure Bucky would like this. Bucky's in Italy, you know. He's already made Corporal.'” The lieutenant had talent as a mimic. Her voice flattened out to their own New York accent, deepening and rushing the openings as Steve always did.

Bucky handed her a fresh cigarette and waited, foot tapping on the concrete of the lowest stair. “When Phillips told him the project was scrapped and he'd be selling bonds, he nearly broke a chair. 'Have you read any of your reports? Men are fighting a war – they're dying – and I haven't heard from Bucky in months and I need to be there!' He said 'I need to be there' at least five times before Colonel Phillips ordered him out.” She had mastered her voice, but the tight curl of her shoulders and the tension in her neck belied the nonchalance of her tone. “Not a day passes that he doesn't mention you, Sergeant. I know that you hate rye bread but love pumpernickel, that you always burn sausage but make the best soup in New York. I know that you paid for the captain's art school, that you only joined the Army because he insisted.” That wasn't true. Bucky had been drafted, in the fluid space between his official eighteenth birthday and his real one. He'd chucked the notice and told Steve that all the preaching must have gotten to him. His friend had canvassed the entire block announcing that Bucky was his convert to the war effort.

“What do you want?” he demanded, throwing his words up like a shield. “Phillips decided Captain America can't fight when I'm there.”

Carter smirked, but there was something heavy in it. “I am afraid, Sergeant, that he won't fight if you're not.” She lifted a hand to stop his protest. “You'll notice that he was content to prance about on stage until he got word that you were in danger.” The envy buried under the roll of her vowels would have been indiscernible but for Bucky's own intimate acquaintance with the feeling.

“He wants to save the world,” Bucky argued, flicking away the cigarette and the unreasonable desire to say _I was in danger_ everyday _and Leonards' head wasn't even near his torso and there were other men in that plant -_

“He wants a lot of things,” Carter agreed, voice soft around the edges. She didn't seem to realize that she was smiling. Someone else had noticed that about Steve, then. “But I think he may need you.” Her hands tightened, but none of the bitterness bled into her tone. She was stronger than he'd given her credit for. In return, he dug through the rucksack slouched at his feet for the leather of the sketchbook he'd planned to take, tearing out a drawing towards the back and handing it to her. It was the one where Carter was in civilian clothes, a beautiful woman instead of a soldier. She gasped and cradled it between the flats of her palms. “This is -” Her gaze on him was too knowing; he flipped the book shut and stuffed it away. “Thank you.” Bucky shrugged and stood, staring at the horizon. Then he turned to go back up the stairs. “Steve was right, you know,” her lilting voice followed him in. “You are a good man.”

~*~

Later, in the midst of battles and raids and disastrous nights attempting to camp, someone would inevitably bring up the first few weeks of training. “Do you remember when Cap knocked out the boxing champion?” Morita would snicker, or “Do you remember when Dernier blew up the lab?” Dugan would reminisce while building a grenade in a bottle. Bucky always nodded, and if he didn't add anything – well, it was hardly out of the ordinary. The truth was that he couldn't recall most of the first month, though it wasn't until he collapsed, feverish and still clutching his rifle that anyone noticed. Trying to shoot the man brought in to spar with Captain America seemed to get their attention.

When he swam back to consciousness it was to the sensation of a needle in his arm and restraints around his wrists. Steve's voice startled him into silence between the third and fourth digits of his serial number. Or was that Parkinson's serial number? He hadn't spent much time staring at his own dog tags.

“Bucky! Damnit, Buck!” The person bruising his upper arms with their fingers growled and switched into very proper German mixed with familiar words that smelled of pickled cabbage and greasy blintzes. Either they wanted cabbage in their soup or they were implying something particularly sordid about his mother's use of vegetables: Steve's grasp of languages tended to cause either confusion or offense.

He blinked wearily at the sweaty, dirt-streaked freckles in front of him. “ _Was_?” The azure eyes inches from his own squinted with effort, mouth bunching around a half-formed translation that would likely be painful for both of them. “Steve, speak American.”

There wasn't enough energy in the words to make them a real command; Steve scowled regardless. “That's what I was telling you to do!” he bristled, caught between shouting and sulking. “Why were you -” Bucky reached up to wipe off the sweat he felt building on his forehead. Or, he tried to. If Steve missed the discordant sound of metal against the frame of the cot – they had used _handcuffs_ – he certainly noticed the tension when Bucky's body braced itself for the expected onslaught. “Oh,” came the soft apology, “you were, well . . .they were concerned.”

As soon as the cuffs came off he ripped the needle out of his arm and curled a knee up to his chest. Years of practice made it easy to ignore the displeasure Captain America radiated, and to dodge the IV brandished at him. “Maehr,” he told Steve, shifting so that the other man could find space on the narrow bed. It wasn't the medical center he recognized from wrist sprains and burns, but the walls were still unpainted concrete, permeated with the abrasive smells of bleach and ammonia. Steve tensed and focused on fraying the edge of the sheet. “He knows his way around a rifle, and he isn't -”

“Lieutenant Maehr was killed in action during Operation Argus two weeks ago,” Steve blurted out before Bucky could finish. The look of relief at not hearing what Maehr was that Barnes wasn't vanished the moment he realized what he'd said. Or in the time it took him to lift his head and see the expression on his friend's face. “I mean . . . I'm sorry?” he tried, but they both knew he was lying. Maehr couldn't replace Bucky if he was dead. But a month earlier he hadn't been dead, and Bucky had been leaving. A month earlier -

“It's still no good.” Bucky pressed his eye socket into his knee, watching the patterns of light brighten and fade as the rebellious tic leaped in his cheek. Had it been quick? Had he gotten shot, or was it a mine? Did he bleed to death? Did someone drag him back across, or did they leave him under the arcing lines of a crossfire? Was he in pieces? “I'm no good.”

Steve Rogers would never admit to being scared: not when he was surrounded by boys twice his size and half as smart, not when the landlord sent thugs to collect money they didn't have, not when his body was choking him with every breath. He had never needed to. Bucky could sense the demarcations of Steve's terrors much better than his own. “We'll fix it,” Captain America promised. He shuffled around until he could tuck himself around the sharpening lines of Bucky's ribcage, folding his ludicrous new body back into old shapes. “Everything will be fine.”

There was nothing to say to that, not in German or English or even the few words of Gaelic he'd gleaned from lullabies. There was nothing Bucky could say that wouldn't hurt Steve, and so there was nothing to say at all. Bucky breathed past the feel of bleach at the top of his throat and the dull ache in his eye and no one mentioned the blood on both their hands.

~*~

Phillips had the papers for Sergeant Barnes' honorable discharge drawn up and signed before Captain America had moved from the lab they'd sequestered Bucky in. Then he handed them to Lt. Carter to process. Unfortunately, her ankle twisted as she was bringing them to the office. Falsworth came to her rescue amidst the drifts of paper, and if he happened to tread particularly harshly on some of them – ahem, the lady's well-being was paramount. Phillips nearly had the second set of forms finished and stamped before the team borrowed the newest radios and split up to search every room in the facility. Lt. Carter accidentally ambushed Stark's weapon lab, and Morita picked the lock on what turned out to be the colonel's office. Falsworth ended up eavesdropping on the cryptographers' meeting, and Dugan tumbled from a ceiling vent into the MI5's northern headquarters. Jones finally found Captain America, but only because Sarge was standing in a hallway in a hospital gown with his arms folded over his chest.

It was one of their favorite campfire stories: how they saved Sarge's honor, and survived to sleep on cold, damp forest floors while fighting villains comfortably ensconced in warm buildings nearby. Jim had the best parts, mostly because Steve was a terrible storyteller and couldn't recount how he'd stormed into Phillips' open office without either spluttering about injustice or laughing too hard to say anything at all. Having heard Morita repeat his excuses – _This is part of training, sir. They said we needed to know our way around. For the training. And your office would be our main objective, because you're the bad guy. I mean, you would be. If you were bad, and we had objectives. Which we do. Unless you object?_ \- neither reaction surprised Bucky overmuch. They had also learned a few helpful things about code-breaking, and Dugan had been told several ways he could be broken as well.

Training had ended soon after that. Officially, it was because the threat was increasing and their team was the first line of defense. Falsworth had leapt to his feet and cheered, “Let's hear one for Captain America and the Chorus Boys!” incidentally expounding on the other reason they were being sent out. Morita had tried to explain to Dernier that a chorus boy and a rent boy were not the same, which convinced Falsworth to dress them all in stockings and lace. Bucky caught Jones's eye and the corners of his mouth lifted thinking of other men in silk and lace, but the wayward muscle in his cheek stayed calm. Martin in lingerie was better than Martin huffing his last words against Bucky's cheek, smelling like stale smoke and hoarse from shouting.

Bucky knew how the world worked, and if he couldn't have Martin or Parkinson there was Dernier cursing at Dugan while Jones tried to translate, Morita imitating Falsworth and sounding like a chimney-sweep. If he wouldn't ever have little Steve Rogers, who no one could have because he didn't exist, then there was Captain America, just as determined to pick fights and need saving, overflowing with fantastic ideas. Steve was right. Bucky would never get what he wanted – wasn't stupid enough to let himself want anything, not out loud – but everything was going to be fine, after all.

Then they went after Zola, and he couldn't hang on.

**Author's Note:**

> In case it's unclear - which it is when I read this! - in this fic-verse, Bucky never learned to read. I imagine he had some form of dyslexia, and so probably could have if his teachers hadn't just been overworked, underpaid, and assumed he was one of a hundred kids who was never going to come to any good.


End file.
